You can argue all you want about the merits of the various mobile operating systems but it’s undoubtedly Android that has put smartphones into the hands of the impecunious masses and in numbers that would have been inconceivable just eighteen months ago.
Vodafone Smart Tidy price: Vodafone's Smart
The new king of the cheap …

Why such a low %

65% ? Value for money wise, I would be looking at a much higher rating.

As your last paragraph states, its horses for courses. This is no £400 phone, but it still does everything that your non-hardcore user wants to do. How about comparing it to Android tablets from ASDA etc which cost £100. That would be a good comparison point I suppose.

Vodafone

I wouldn't touch Vodafone with your barge pole.

Vodafone relay the content of subscribers' private/confidential communications (with or without their knowledge) to Bluecoat in California. Then engage in a replay attack against the web sites visited.

I am assuming

when the author wrote his review the Smart was at it's launch price of £60, that being half the Orange San Frans £120 price from Orange. Still, a solid review with all the relevant details covered including how it works as a phone. Good to see space given to screen grabs - esp the keyboard options - rather than usual and frankly rather useless camera snaps.

"Likewise, graphics-heavy gaming is out of the question"

or you could...

Just go find a HTC Diamond on ebay and slap android on it for £50 and two hours or so's work. You'd get the same thing in the end, and the Diamond actually looks better and can dual boot into the bargain. Get the Touch Pro and you get a MicroSD slot into the bargain and winmo 6.5.3/Android roms pre cooked.

Its not un-attractive, but I bet you wont mention that 434mhz processor on a symbian S60 3rd based phone (you know, the one thats 3 years old) can play pointless-birds out to TV while this android set would be sitting in the corner whimpering and wishing itself into another dimension.

I have said it numerous times before and I will probably say it numerous times again. A phone is a phone is a phone. It is a working tool. Its a device that can and has saved lives. Putting resource hungry and battery hungry crap on it for nothing more than fashions sake is a bad idea.

Even Nokia's ancient S40 platform is rapidly catching up to Andreadfuls capabilities, and that doesnt need its own powerstation just to boot... the less said about iSpy the better...

Why bother with new buy second hand

I got the Wife a used Sony X10i and that was only £95 from local Cash converters. It was £100 but got it cheaper as the screen was very badly marked. But I knew it had the screen protector on from factory so under that it was mint. which it was

So you can get a 1ghz phone for less than £100 if you look around, There was a moto defy the otherday in another CC store for £99 only 800mhz but still fast I've owned one and it was just a bit slower than the galaxy S on the neocore score.

Not a reply, actually, just a question...

@ Jemma

"I have said it numerous times before and I will probably say it numerous times again. A phone is a phone is a phone. It is a working tool. Its a device that can and has saved lives"

You can say it as often as you like, that doesn't make it true. A large percentage of smartphones are not used primarily as "phones" but as pocket computers, media players and data communications devices.

If you want a phone as an emergency device - I wonder how mankind survived without them - get a Nokia C1-01 or similar with a stand-by battery life that can be measured in weeks.

And I use my 2006 E70...

To watch movies and shows, do practically everything online bar banking, push email, games, flash built in - in 2006 no less, not to mention dual processors, a high res screen and a surprisingly good camera. I also use it as a phone which is why two phones - both android have gone back, because although they do everything else as well as the E70, they cant get a signal to save my life. And I misphrase that deliberately, since a friend of mine was murdered by mistake because the people who did it mistook her for me. For me A GOOD STEADY DEPENDABLE SIGNAL is paramount. As is my personal security and the security of my data and my ideas. So thank you but no, count me out of iSpy and Andredge... and dont assume that because I happen to be female that I have no idea about technology, because I find that deeply offensive, just for the record. And so will every female reader on this site.

I have stuck with and will continue to stick with Symbian & Nokia because the soul and centre of a smartphone is the bit where it says PHONE. If you want a pmp that can maybe get a signal if you are three feet from a mast for £750 go buy an iSpy 4.